


I lost it, called it quits

by calerine



Series: Nowhere Boys character studies [3]
Category: Nowhere Boys (TV)
Genre: Gender Dysphoria, M/M, Multi, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:45:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Felix Ferne character study, in which Felix is a trans boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I lost it, called it quits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foreignconstellations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreignconstellations/gifts).



> Written for Charlie, my love. Originally posted [here](http://badgels.tumblr.com/post/69845804290/i-lost-it-called-it-quits-1256-words-nowhere).
> 
> Warning for gender dysphoria.

Felix Ferne is born on a clear Autumn morning. From the very beginning, his mother is obsessed with dressing him. She fills his wardrobe with pink polka-dots, patterned fabric adorning his room. _Look at our beautiful baby girl!_  She coos, and his father, long-suffering to the last, carries him with ever-gentle hands and teaches him how to ride a bicycle, how to find coins in gutters and how to skip stones by the river.

Felix meets Jake on the first day of pre-school. He’s wrapped around his mother’s legs, tears staining his cheeks and Felix wants to scoff because he raced away from his parents, only too glad to be in trousers and sneakers that settle comfortably over his skin like clothes have never done before. But he remembers what his mother said about being kind, so he smiles at Jake, says _let’s play!_  and proffers his hand until Jake takes it. They pick Ellen up during lunchtime. She takes to Felix immediately, holds his hand and tells him about a grasshopper she has in her pocket, making them both kiss it to prove themselves worthy of her friendship. At the end of the day, they are mud-splattered, scrapped-kneed and best friends for life.

Then when they are nine, Jake tells him, “I think you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.” The betrayal wells thick up in his chest. It makes him want to sitting across Jake and glare at him for the rest of the day and yet, never speak to him again. As Ellen pulls Felix away, he glimpses the smile fade from Jake’s eyes.

His parents attend every parent-teacher meeting, bring Oscar along if they have to and listen to his teachers tell them how excellent he is, how lady-like, how demure and sensitive and it’s a vicious cycle for his dresses will never fit. All that lace curling around Felix’s knees makes him sick with something he can never identify, shoes so tight that his skin crawls and aches for  _anything else_. He sits for hours with relatives calling him  _niece, granddaughter_  and wants so much to crawl into his cousin’s skin so at least he could wear oversized jumpers that cover up his growing chest.

“You should call me Felix from now on,” he tells Jake when they’re eleven and on summer break, laying on Jake’s bedsheets even though the heat makes the material stick to their skin.

“Why?” Jake asks, then hurriedly “okay.”

Felix never answers his question.

For his twelfth birthday, Ellen and Jake give him a combined present and he’s about to tease them for being stingy when his fingers settle upon strong fabric. Suddenly, his throat is tight with emotion and he can’t stop laughing. For a week, Felix doesn’t take off the binder until the lines are imprinted deep into his skin. He will take what he can get. (Small victories.)

He is fourteen when Oscar loses the use of his legs and Felix’s life splits cleanly down between Before and After. He spends sleepless nights replaying that moment in his head. His voice urging,  _just a little bit farther_  and  _c’mon Oskie what are you scared of_ , ever the sickening snap of branches, always Oscar’s hand slipping from in his own and sheer terror in his eyes. His mother’s eyes are swollen for two weeks. Oscar forgives immediately, but Felix can barely breathe from the guilt hanging heavy on his shoulders. He visits the hospital everyday, skipping school until his teachers fix him with concerned eyes, until he lashes out during English class, between Shakespeare’s  _When forty winters shall beseige thy brow_  and  _And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field._  There is poetic irony somewhere in there, but Felix is too busy scrubbing lurid graffiti from  school walls to find it.

He disappears for weeks and comes back in black. Jake waves at him from across the courtyard and Felix is so spent from nights crying in Ellen’s bed. It’s unfair, but then again none of this is fair. Not the nightmares that haunt his sleep, that leave him grey-fleshed, cold-boned and empty in the mornings, nor those panic attacks, hours huddled in hospital fire escapes trying not to throw up over his shoes. He doesn’t talk to Jake again and Jake doesn’t either, doesn’t even look at him during sports. It’s so petty but Felix can’t help wishing that for all the years of their friendship, he could at least  _try_.

For months, Ellen makes doctor’s appointments on his behalf, gives him all the hugs he does not get from anyone else. He writes her songs to say what he cannot, _thank you_  and  _I’m sorry_ in kind. All that he earns from working at the local music stores goes to his injections. He grows taller, shoots up overnight, bones pulling and muscles stretching to buffer against the world. His joints start to feel like a home and the stubble emerging from his chin feel perfectly prickly over his knuckles. His parents are so busy with Oscar that they barely notice that he’s outgrown his sneakers, his skirts, his jeans or even the way his name has never fit.

“What about all the dresses I bought for you, ‘licia?” says his mum when he tells her, tiredness cloaking her voice. Felix can barely bring himself to take offence for she is slumped at the dining table, utterly exhausted.

“It’s alright, son,” his dad hugs him and Felix sighs into the embrace, smells tobacco and late nights at the office, at the hospital, detergent peeling away the skin on his hands. It feels like the closest to acceptance he’ll ever get.

A year later, he is magicked into an alternate dimension - at least that’s what he’s choosing to believe. Jake is always there, day and night, saying  _we should keep moving, we should get food, are you okay?_ and it hurts Felix’s heart to have him so close. He thinks about the nights they spent with Ellen at the bottom of Jake’s backyard, pointing out the stars, holding hands and pressing up close in spite of sleeping bags.

Then all the days since, the taunts, teases and bruises settling deep in his skin like a punishment he has always been too willing to bear. Jake falls asleep on Felix’s hip too many times to be coincidences and in slumber, the lines of his face smooth out. Felix almost reaches out then. Up close, they are so much deeper. Felix misses his best friend so much that he can’t think about anything else other than the freckles on Jake’s cheeks and how his eyes never meets Felix’s.

 _I meant what I said yesterday. About being sorry,_  Jake whispers on the second night they’re there. Wind whips violently at the roof, Andy is snoring and something eases in Felix’s chest, unravels like it’s been waiting for all of two years for these words.

 _I know_ , Felix replies and feels it when Jake relaxes against his body. He does reach out this time, touches his fingertips to Jake’s ear and says  _I’ve missed you._

(“You’re still wearing it,” Jake murmurs, his palms spread reverently over Felix’s chest.

There are excuses crowding on the tip of his tongue, and one secret among so many that this binder is for bad days, for good luck, in hopes that the sun will peek through cloud covers.

But Jake is on his knees, praying new prayers and touching him like Felix’s a blessing so he just nods, says  _yeah_  instead.)


End file.
